chocolate peanut butter surprise cookies.

Perhaps this is the reincarnation of Reese's peanut butter cups in cookie form. Yet, not quite.

The chocolate dough is not purely chocolaty but has an addition of a modest amount of peanut butter to attain a harmonious chocolate-peanut butter blend. You taste the chocolate first, and then the peanut butter sneaks up and alerts you of its presence, but doesn't punch you in the face.

The peanut butter filling is not like Reese's filling in texture but it certainly looked like it did in its pre-baked state. My peanut butter dough was crumbly and dry (I think its because of my brand of peanut butter), and I had to add a splash of milk to moisten it into a malleable state. After baking, it had a strange slight chew to it. It definitely does taste like the middle of a peanut butter cup though.

After the peanut butter filling is enveloped in the chocolate dough, the whole ball of dough gets rolled in sugar. It provides a really nice texture contrast even though it makes the cookie sweet. I say skip the sugar bath and eat it fresh while the outsides are still crunchy if you want the textural element to the cookies, or use coarse sugar so that you can use less while providing sufficient crunch.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Surprise Cookies
adapted from here
makes 24

The changes I made to the original recipe are to add chocolate chips to the chocolate dough and salt to the peanut butter filling so that it resembles a Reese's peanut butter cup filling. Also, if you're rolling the cookies in sugar, you can probably get away with cutting down the sugars in the dough by a third if you don't want an overly sweet cookie.

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup sugar + more for rolling
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1 cup peanut butter, divided
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
1/4 to 1/2 cup chocolate chips
3/4 cup powdered sugar
pinch of salt
milk, if needed

Preheat oven to 375F. Prepare a baking sheet.

Whisk the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt together in a medium bowl.

Cream the butter and 1/4 cup peanut butter together. Add the sugars and beat until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla and egg and beat until combined. Stir in the chocolate chips until evenly distributed. Stir in the flour mixture until incorporated. Divide the chocolate dough into 24 portions.

In another bowl, mix the powdered sugar, pinch of salt and remaining 3/4 cup peanut butter until the mixture comes together. Add a touch a milk if it's too crumbly. Divide the peanut butter filling into 24 portions and roll them each into a ball.

Take a portion of chocolate dough, flatten it and wrap it around a peanut butter ball. Form the cookie into a ball and roll it in the extra granulated sugar. Place the cookie onto the prepared baking sheet and press to flatten to about a 1/2 inch thickness.

Bake for about 7 to 9 minutes or until the surface looks dry and cracked.